201: the Quality Assessment of Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy Published in the Cancer Journals

Background and aims: A cancer diagnosis is life-damaging on many levels, and people react to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer differently and receiving a cancer diagnosis is a stressful event all over the world. Our aim is to evaluate the quality of reporting of all diagnostic studies published in two major cancer journals using the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) initiative parameters. Methods: we hand-searched Cancer Journal for Clinicians and Cancer Medicine journals for all abstracts of diagnostic studies published. They independently assessed the reporting quality of the English version of all eligible abstracts based on a modified version of the STARD. The STARD checklist of 25 items and flow chart was used to evaluate the quality of each publication. Results: We totally found 739 articles. All studies were published between 1996–2015. A total of 27 publications were included as diagnostic studies. There were 21 articles that have cheeked more than half of STARD checklist items on them. The most checked item was state the research questions with 21 cheeks and the least cheeked item was report the determination of the results with 3 cheeks on it. Conclusion: The reporting quality of abstracts of diagnostic accuracy in the Cancer Journal for Clinicians and Cancer Medicine journals needs to be improved the current standards of reporting of diagnostic accuracy tests are highly variable. The STARD initiative may be a useful tool for appraising the strengths and weaknesses of diagnostic accuracy studies.